Walk Covent Garden,
your way.

Covent Garden is the closest London ever got to copying Italy. In 1630 the Earl of Bedford was given permission by Charles I to redevelop his former monastic land - the "convent garden" of Westminster Abbey, which had been confiscated by Henry VIII a century earlier - into a residential square in the new Italian fashion. Bedford hired Inigo Jones, the architect who had brought Palladian classicism to England a decade earlier with the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Jones designed a single large open square framed by uniform terraced houses with continuous arcaded fronts - the first such Italian piazza in England, finished in 1631. It became the prototype for every London garden square that followed: Bloomsbury, Belgravia, Eaton Square, the lot.

The market arrives

The piazza was aristocratic for about 30 years. By 1660 fruit-and-vegetable vendors had begun setting up stalls on the south side of the square - originally informally, then by royal charter from Charles II in 1670, giving the Earl of Bedford the right to operate a market. The aristocrats moved out (to Mayfair, mostly); the market took over. By the 1830s the informal stalls had grown into a chaos of carts, sheds and temporary structures choking the whole square. Charles Fowler designed the formal Market Building in 1830 - the long iron-and-glass-roofed pavilion you see today, still in use though now full of shops and cafés rather than fruit.

The market grew. By 1900 Covent Garden was the largest fruit-and-vegetable market in Britain, supplying the whole of London. The streets around the piazza became congested with porters carrying barrels, carts unloading, hawkers, public houses serving market workers from 04:00 onwards. The wider neighbourhood developed around this trade: the Lamb & Flag pub (oldest in Covent Garden, licensed 1772), the surrounding theatreland that drew patrons from the visiting market traders, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane (the licence is 1663, making it the oldest continuously-operating theatre in the English-speaking world). Covent Garden was a working-class quarter dressed up around aristocratic architecture.

The 1974 move and the rescue

The market had outgrown the site by mid-20th century. Traffic congestion, refrigeration needs, the increasing size of distribution lorries - none of it could be accommodated in a 17th-century piazza. In November 1974 the wholesale fruit-and-vegetable market moved out to a new purpose-built site at New Covent Garden in Nine Elms, south of the river. The piazza was suddenly empty.

The plan was demolition. The Greater London Council in 1974 announced that Covent Garden would be redeveloped as a road interchange and modern office complex - the same fate that the wider central-London 1960s and 70s planners had earmarked for Soho and Whitechapel. A campaign by local residents, businesses and conservationists (the Covent Garden Community Association, founded 1971, still operating) fought the redevelopment through public inquiries for two years. The campaign won. In 1976 the listed buildings were saved; the piazza was redeveloped as a pedestrianised market for tourists rather than wholesale; the 1830 Market Building was restored. The first new market reopened in 1980. The Apple Market crafts came shortly after.

The Royal Opera House and the theatres

The Royal Opera House on the north-east corner of the piazza has had three buildings on the same site: the first (1732) burned down, the second (1809) also burned down, the third (1858) survives. A major 1999 redevelopment opened up the public spaces - the Paul Hamlyn Hall amphitheatre bar (originally the Floral Hall, then the market's flower hall), the Linbury Theatre underground, the public terraces overlooking the piazza. The Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera both perform here; programming is among the most ambitious in Europe. The standing-room tickets at £4-8 are one of London's great cultural bargains.

The wider Theatreland extends south from the piazza: Drury Lane (1663, the oldest), the Lyceum (1834, currently hosting The Lion King), the Aldwych (1905), the Adelphi (1806), the Vaudeville (1870), the Duchess (1929). About 40 theatres operate in the West End, most clustered between Covent Garden and Soho. The TKTS half-price ticket booth on Leicester Square - five minutes south of the piazza - sells genuine same-day discounted tickets.

Seven Dials, Neal's Yard, the surrounding streets

The piazza is the centre but the surrounding streets carry the better walking. Seven Dials - a small star intersection where seven streets meet - was built in 1693 by Thomas Neale, the same speculator who built much of the wider area. The sundial column in the centre (the original 1693 column was demolished in 1773 on the suspicion it was a Catholic gathering point; the current column is a 1989 replica). The seven streets around it - Earlham, Mercer, Monmouth, Short's Gardens, plus three smaller - host independent fashion, restaurants and cafés on a more human scale than the Piazza itself. Neal's Yard - the small colourful courtyard accessed through narrow alleys off Short's Gardens - is named for the same Thomas Neale; it has been a cluster of small shops since the 1970s and home to Neal's Yard Remedies (the natural cosmetics company) since 1981. Monmouth Coffee Company opened nearby in 1978 and became one of the early UK speciality-coffee leaders.

The London Transport Museum on the south-east corner of the piazza (the 1872 Flower Market building, restored) is one of the best small museums in London - the original Metropolitan Line carriages, the first Routemaster bus, Harry Beck's original 1933 tube map. It's a real museum with serious historical depth, not a tourist gift shop. Entry is £25.50 but the ticket is valid for a full year, which makes it good value for residents and returning visitors.